These guidelines cover all stages of the patient pathway from primary care referral to surgical outpatients, pre-operative assessment, hospital admission, surgery, post-operative care and discharge.
The guidelines are primarily intended for the management of patients with diabetes referred for elective surgery. However, most of the recommendations can be applied to the patient presenting for emergency surgery with the proviso that many such patients are high risk and are likely to require an intravenous insulin infusion and level 1 care (acute ward with input from critical care team) as a minimum.
The Joint British Diabetes Societies (JBDS) for inpatient care (JBDS-IP) is supported by Diabetes UK, the Association of British Clinical Diabetologists (ABCD) and the Diabetes Inpatient Specialist Nurse UK Group. The aim of JBDS-IP is to improve inpatient diabetes care throughout the UK. This is mainly through the development and use of high quality evidence based guidelines, and through better inpatient care pathways.
